by Colin Conway
Minutes later, he ran up the steps to her second-floor apartment two at a time, using his key to leave the rain behind. The door opened to the middle of her apartment. Blessed heat and the scent of his woman enveloped him. “Hey, baby, it’s me.”
“Be right out.”
Her large bedroom was on his right. Directly in front of him was the generously sized bathroom, door closed. To his left was the galley kitchen and living room all in one oversized space with a door to the small porch. He tossed the coat over a high-back chair back.
Aurora’s corner unit had windows on the front and the side, filling the space with natural light even on the rainy day. In front of the room, a new canvas sat on an easel. Simple pencil lines hinted at what it would become. A couple, dancing. There were so few lines, no more than maybe ten, but he could see the man, his arms around the woman. Her head was back as if laughing. He remembered the dance. Hell, he remembered the moment. It was her birthday last fall. The last warm night, as it turned out. She wore purple and the heels he loved. He wore a dark gray suit she liked taking off him. It was a good night. A very good night.
“Hello, baby.” Her arms snaked around his waist. “You’re wet. You should get out of that shirt. Why didn’t you wear a coat?”
He turned and brought her in for a real hello. Aurora was mixed race, her father black, her mother white. He couldn’t say she resembled either. She had inherited her mother’s green eyes but instead of blonde hair, she had thick black hair that fell in rings. Barefoot, she fit perfectly under his chin and was tantalizingly close to mouth-to-mouth in those stacked heels of her painting.
“Wow. Talk about your hellos. What did I do to deserve that?” She kissed his chin before stepping away, pulling him toward the bedroom.
“Nothing and everything.” Something caught his eye. He clasped her hand and raised it. A white bandage covered the meaty part of her palm. “What happened?”
“Oh, it’s just a little cut. Not a big deal.”
He held on when she tugged, then peeked under the white tape. “That’s not a little cut. How did you do it? It’s pretty clean. Was it a knife?”
While Cruz had worked the night before, Aurora had gone out with bride-to-be Erin Davis and the rest of the bridal party. Cruz was the best man to the groom, Matt Yablonski, the narcotics detective who was his closest friend. The big day was less than a month away, and, to his mind, the women used it as an excuse to shop, giggle, and party.
“Stop it, Zeus,” she said, calling him by the nickname she’d given him on their first date. He wanted her to call him “Cruz,” but she couldn’t kiss a man she called by his last name. She pulled her hand away. “You’re sounding like a detective again. I thought you had plans today.”
“I was going to help Yablonski clean out his basement, but he cancelled because of that.” He pointed out the window to the rain. “It’s January. What the hell is with this thirty-seven-degree rain shit? If it’s going to be cold, be cold. Twenty. Twenty’s a good number.” He went to the window, annoyed at the thick, gray clouds. “Let it snow, let it snow, let it fucking snow.”
She cocked her head as if studying his pose. “What happened between you and Matt?”
Yablonski and Cruz had worked narcotics together until the night that changed Cruz’s face, his life, and his career. Last year, Cruz made a call looking for information and met the bald man with the copper wire beard for breakfast. There was nothing subtle about the now-narcotics detective, including the way he ramrodded back into Cruz’s life. It was a welcome intrusion.
“Yablonski has nothing to do with this.” Cruz had just gotten off the phone and was considering what to do with his now free Saturday when Bollier called. The memory got him worked up all over again. “You want to know what the fucker did?”
“Matt?”
“Bollier!” He gave her the play-by-play, finishing with the grand insult. “He’s calling in his marker. His marker. Like he’s been keeping fucking score for these last three years.”
“Huh.” She ignored the shouting and the swearing. “Who’s the girl?”
“Sophie DeMusa. Apparently figuring out who she is part of the little puzzle he’s created for me. He said she was, get this, an acquaintance. How does a fifty-something highbrow doc get to be acquainted with a college senior? He’s lying. I don’t know if I’m more pissed about the lie or the blackmail.”
“He didn’t blackmail you.”
He glared his disagreement with her assessment.
“He’s strong-arming you, which is totally different. I wonder why?”
“Because he’s an asshole.”
“Stop it.”
“He called me a twit, Aurora.”
“And what did you call him?”
“A son of a bitch, but that’s not the point. Don’t take his side.”
“I’m not taking sides.” She unbuttoned his shirt, peeling the transparent material from his body. She opened the drawer filled with his clothing. Fingering through the folded shirts, she selected a soft cotton shirt in a blue she would call “sky.” “I know he hurt your feelings, but this is when you should think like a detective.”
Denial was instant. “My feelings aren’t hurt and I’m still wet.”
“Of course they are but put them aside. Oscar needs your help.” Aurora took a towel from a folded stack of laundry and patted his chest dry. “Why didn’t he just ask?”
He snorted, lifting his arms to give her better access. “Oscar Bollier doesn’t ask for help. Ever. It’s like he thinks less of himself if he can’t do it alone.”
“He always helps other people. He doesn’t think less of them.” She dried his back and then attended to the long braid hanging to his shoulder blades.
“I’m surprised he called me at all. He’s never done it before.” It was true, he realized, and uncomfortable.
“Well there’s your answer. That was him asking for help. You just missed it.”
“I don’t miss things.” Even as he said it, he remembered his surprise at the request. He practically ran out of the house for the chance to help Bollier in one one-hundredth of the way he’d helped him. The memory humiliated him. “Maybe. Why the strong-arm then, Ms. Detective?”
“Well…you weren’t going to help him so maybe,” she shrugged, “maybe this is important to him, and he needed a way to make you say yes.” She tossed the towel aside. “Why did you turn him down?”
“I didn’t. I mean I did, but it wasn’t because I didn’t want to help. She needs a psychiatrist or a psychologist, not a homicide detective. She isn’t dead.” He pulled the dry shirt on, the warmth pleasant after the cold. “The girl tried to commit suicide, baby. Plain and simple. Some people can’t get past the emotion to accept the facts.”
“That’s not Oscar, Zeus.” She frowned, her full lips pouting in consideration. “He’s pragmatic to a fault. The man doesn’t know how to handle emotions, if you ask me.”
Aurora was right. Bollier thought with his head, not his heart. He put aside the feelings he refused to consider were hurt and thought like the detective he was. Bollier’s analytical mind didn’t have room for denial. There was more to the story, which meant this was his request for help. It was as subtle as a sledgehammer on a cantaloupe.
“Cut Oscar a break,” she said softly. “Everyone needs one, every now and then.”
“I guess.” He sighed, accepting he was going to give in. “He lied to me, too. He said she was only an acquaintance, but you should have seen the look on his face when he was next to her bed. What kind of secret does he have he can’t tell me?” This last question he posed to himself.
She pulled away, leading him out of the bedroom. “Not all secrets are bad. Neither are all lies. Don’t jump to conclusions. He’ll tell you when he’s ready.”
“You think so?”
“Either that, or you’ll figure it out. You’re a detective. A damn good one. Do you want coffee?” She let g
o of his hand as she went into her narrow kitchen and the coffee maker sitting on the counter.
“You know I do.” He went to the ceramic lotus flower he’d given her on their second date. Today it sat on a corner of the kitchen counter. It was cheap, and she knew it. He joked Buddhist monks made it. Mexican Buddhists based on the sticker on the bottom. It had become one of their inside jokes. Cruz picked the flower up, liking that each time he was in the apartment, it was moved.
The paper under the trinket caught his attention. In big red letters were the words Final Notice. He thumbed through the stack of bills, half of which were overdue.
“What are you doing?”
He held up the bills. “What are these?”
Aurora waved it off as she dressed the coffee the way he liked it, light and sweet. “Oh, yeah. I need to mail those.”
Relieved, he returned them to the counter. “Good. I thought you might be in trouble.”
“Trouble? Like what?”
“You know, financial trouble. Like you couldn’t pay the bills.”
She traded the kitchen for the corner of her couch, handing off the steaming mug en route. “Well, I can’t pay all of them. I pick my favorites, and the rest wait until next month. It’s not a big deal,” she said when he just stared. “They’ll send another bill.”
He picked the stack back up before sitting next to her. He thought about choosing his words carefully, then blurted the question on the top of his mind. “Baby, how did you get so far behind? Half of these are overdue.”
“I don’t know. It’s just the basics, like groceries, cable, paint, and canvas. I needed to order the bridesmaid’s dress and the shoes.”
He looked through the credit card statement. The Keurig coffee maker she’d bought was on it. So was the bedding set she’d bought for his bedroom. And the paint for his living room and dining room. “Aurora, why were you buying me things you couldn’t afford?”
“I can afford them,” she said defensively. “I haven’t hit my credit limit.”
Cruz stared at her, certain he hadn’t heard her right. It wasn’t possible. She was a grown, educated woman. “Your credit limit?”
“Don’t worry. If I do, I can just get another card.”
“Another card?” Crunching the stack of bills in his fist, he lectured on budgets and interest rates and credit ratings and debt. The Fed chair might have made an appearance in the monologue.
Aurora pressed her face pressed into her knees. “Why are you yelling?”
Was he? He hadn’t noticed his voice raising with each past due notice. He didn’t remember standing. “Because you’re in trouble and you don’t seem to know it. Because I don’t like to see you distressed.”
“Then stop yelling!” She curled into a tighter ball.
He dropped his voice to try to soothe what he’d ruffled. “Baby, listen to me.” He sat on the edge of the couch, crowding her.
She pushed at him. “Go away.”
He dropped the bills to pull her unwilling body into his lap. “I’m sorry I yelled, but baby, we have a real problem.”
She wiped her eyes on her back of her hand. “You mean I have a real problem.”
“We. We’re together, right? That’s what ‘I love you’ means.” He kissed the top of her head, cradling her against him the best he could. “I have some mo—”
Aurora popped up so fast she nearly bashed his nose with her head. “If you say you have some money saved, I’m throwing you out.” She scrambled to her feet, planted her hands on her hips and glared down at him. “This is my problem. I’ll solve it.”
He held his hands up in surrender. “Let’s just go through them. Maybe it’s not as bad as I think.”
Skeptically, she sank back down. Together, they walked through her life one line item at a time. She had quietly spent hundreds of dollars on him, and he hadn’t noticed. A shirt here. A set of towels there. His second-floor master bedroom was decorated artistically because of her. He never thought to ask about the money. Shame had him rubbing his hands over his face.
Her teacher’s salary didn’t afford extras. She used her credit card to cover the gaps but never caught up, the balance growing each month. She needed to cut expenses, fast and hard. The biggest was her rent.
“Move in with me.” He didn’t plan to say it, but as he heard it come from his mouth, he knew he meant it.
Her face snapped toward him. “What?”
“Live with me. You’ll save on rent and utilities.”
“You aren’t serious.” She leveled her perfected teacher’s glare at him. “Look at me, this is my not-impressed face.”
He wanted to smile but instead fixed his own face with the stone-cold expression every cop had. “Look at my face. I’m serious. Totally. Serious.”
“Zeus, we’ve talked about this,” she said, pressing her palms to his chest. “We aren’t going to rush things.”
“We stay together most nights. It would make it easier to have all our stuff in one place. And,” he said, sweetening the pot so she would see things his way, “we can finish the other half of the second floor, make it into a real studio. We’ll add skylights. There’s plenty of space for your easels and paint.”
“Oh…but, no, I don’t want to move in together because I have some minor money problems.”
“You have major money issues, baby, but that isn’t why I want you to move in.” He propped himself on one arm, teasing, tempting her with his mouth. “You live with me. You can paint every day. I’ll make dinner, brow beat you when you forget to come down, take you to our bedroom to teach you a lesson.” He nipped at her flat belly. “You would enjoy it. I promise.”
“I bet I would.” Her body trembled with anticipation. “But what do you get out of the deal? I don’t want to come offering nothing but debt.”
“What do I get?” He lifted his chin, grinned and swept her shirt over her head. “Let me show you.”
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